


A Better Son

by CytosineSkald



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Damian is desperate for love, Dick Grayson is Batman, Gen, fathers don't have to be yours by blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 21:18:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12734493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CytosineSkald/pseuds/CytosineSkald
Summary: This place always felt too big. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t really understand it. The cave was, in some ways, unfamiliar territory. Foreign country. He hesitantly gave his feet the gentlest of swings again. The Bunker was home -- this place… he had barely spent any time here before his father had died.He stilled his feet.His father had died.--Some shameless posturing of Damian's feelings about Dick as a father figure.





	A Better Son

**Author's Note:**

> So just a little something.  
> First off: I know I'm fudging the timeline a little bit with respect to Damian's attitude, but I won't tell if you won't. My only defence is a Ron Swanson style "I do what I want". Otherwise... basically what one sees is what one gets.  
> Second off: I know it's pretty shameless. Shaaaaameless. So it goes.  
> Third: if Babs can scare off a bunch of people with a cartoon crocodile, singing Little Richard, I'm allowed to assume her music tastes.
> 
> :) Enjoy~

Damian frowned and set his chin on the table in between his crossed arms, staring out at a space on the wall in the Batcave. He swung his feet from the chair in a moment of childish abandon, trying to touch the floor like he knew his brothers could do -- like his father could do. He felt small, and glared at that one spot on the wall, kicking his leg forward in frustration. His boot caught the foot of another chair, raking it across the metal floor of the platform -- a loud, almost comic screech across the silence. He could hear it echo through the antechambers of the cave.

The bats chittered a little grouchily, and a few fluttered from roost to roost, but he didn’t bother to look up and see if anyone had noticed, even if embarrassment made his shoulders slump inward toward his ears. Better for them to think it was on purpose. He was the grandson of the Demon’s Head. Everything he did was on purpose. The reverberations of sound faded into the cave’s ambiance, and the only sounds in the air again were the dripping of water, chirruping of bats, and the gentle whirr of the computer banks. 

This place always felt too  _ big _ . If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t really understand it. The cave was, in some ways, unfamiliar territory. Foreign country. He hesitantly gave his feet the gentlest of swings again. The Bunker was home -- this place… he had barely spent any time here before his father had died.

He stilled his feet.

His father had died.

Damian caught himself in the thought, and knew he should feel a prickle of pride at how matter-of-fact it was. His mother would be proud. She would lay a hand on his shoulder and tell him how wonderful a job he was doing. Tell him that she expected more of the same exemplary behaviour. It would feel good. Of course, that was assuming  _ he _ felt proud. He would have, a few months ago. He’d have wanted to be his mother’s perfect son, been proud of doing just what she’d have wanted. But he wasn’t proud. Somewhere between then and now, a prickle of shame had managed to worm its way in, and he could feel it wriggling somewhere behind his heart.  _ Grayson _ wouldn’t be proud of the matter-of-factness. Grayson would push the cowl off his face and tell him that it was okay to be sad if he needed to be sad. He’d want Damian to be sad, and to be willing to work through that sadness.

Except he wasn’t sad.

Well, that was a lie. He  _ was _ sad, in his way, but he looked at Grayson, at Drake, and it was different. They mourned. They mourned a father -- a  _ real _ father; someone who had helped them become what they became. Someone who cared for them. Someone they loved. Damian was sad, yes, but it was ankles in their ocean. Bruce Wayne had looked at him like a puzzle, something he hadn’t quite figured out. He was studied and held back and frowned at. He could have named every cog in Bruce Wayne’s head that was labelled “Damian al-Ghul”. How to try to rein in a murderous little brat. His son. Damian was just the heir to a name. Damian al-Ghul, Damian Wayne. What was a last name but a symbol of allegiances taken. What was blood but a biological accident. (He wasn’t an accident, he knew. He was a design. There was pride to be taken in that, in being made.) It didn’t mean anything. He was someone’s progeny, but he wasn’t anyone’s son, not really.

Damian pushed himself away from the table with another silence-splitting screech, turned and kicked the chair over, just to hear it clang and rattle away. The bats cried unhappily above him, swooping to squawk in his ears before settling poutily in some deep-shadow roost. Hang the bats. He waved his hands around his head to scatter them and stood staring at the knocked-over chair with a frown. The silence had swallowed them again -- that vast, cathedral silence.

Grayson’s footsteps were easy to hear coming.

“Think I’ve got everything I came for. We can probably head out whenever.” Grayson had light footfalls, stepping toe-heel, toe-heel, not the heavy heel-toe like people who didn’t care if anyone heard them. He was quiet even in those stiff-soled dress shoes he was made to wear for Wayne Enterprises. The ones he’d spent ten minutes arguing and whining about when picking them out and putting them on that morning. (No, Master Richard, you absolutely  _ cannot _ wear brown shoes with a charcoal suit. I  _ shall not _ allow it. It is  _ unspeakable _ . -- But Alfie, these ones are already broken in. The burgundy ones are new, and I’m going to be feeling them all day, come on. Just this once. Who’s gonna be looking at my feet, anyway?) He had lost the battle and the war, and while shiny burgundy shoes tap-tapped across the floor with a sharp newness, it was still with Grayson’s subtle, recognizably quiet step. “Heard an awful lot of clang-jangling going on -- you alright, buddy? Get in a fight with the chair?”

“No!” He knew his tone had taken a childish whine, and he pursed his lips and avoided Grayson’s face. He knew he’d just have one of those insufferable indulgent looks on. The ones that cared  _ so much _ and tried to be  _ so understanding _ . He grasped his tone and smoothed it out into old hauteur. “The bats were swooping and I had to defend myself.”

“Oh I see.” Grayson shoved hands into charcoal slacks and rocked back on his heels, looking up at the roosts of bats that he’d grown up with. “I should really charge them rent, you know, now that I technically own the land. Freeloaders. Get a job!” he hollered up at the roosting bats, and listened to them rustle and squeak down at him. He smiled fondly, “You know Alfred used to feed them? They used to eat better than I did growing up. Got so used to the food that sometimes I’d go eat lunch on top of the dinosaur,” he pointed at a giant shape covered in a great drooping dust cover, like a shroud, “And they’d swoop down at me to get at the food. B used to say...” He trailed off and Damian turned his head to look at him out of the corner of his eye -- Grayson was looking glassily at some vague point in the air, eyebrows drawn in a flicker of grief, licking his lips like he had lost the words for a moment. There it was. Grief for a father. Damian felt that grief lap at his toes, but Grayson looked like he was treading water. He cleared his throat, “Stop teasing them, chum, is what he said. Little jerks.” He shrugged and Damian looked away again. He telegraphed grief so strongly that it was suffocating. “They’re just bratty sky-puppies, lil’ D. They won’t hurt you.”

Damian’s heart was still twisting with shame, and it made his words sharp again. “I  _ know _ they can’t hurt me. I’m  _ Robin _ , not some frail child. They’re just bats. I am not  _ afraid _ of them.” He had the urge to kick the chair again, but raised himself above it, crossing his arms and turning his back to Grayson. He heard the other man sigh, take the few steps over the grating to right the chair and set it back in its place. This had been Grayson’s home. He’d been Robin even younger than Damian. It was almost impossible to imagine him ever having been that small, even if there were photos that proved it. He towered over Damian and was so far removed from the baby face the current Robin still frowned at in the mirror that it was laughable. He had been a police officer, ridiculous as the idea seemed. He’d nearly been married -- twice. It was strange to imagine him in garish red and yellow, small enough to ride on Bruce’s shoulders. He was  _ Batman _ . Damian’s Batman.

Grayson exhaled sharply as he sat himself in the chair Damian had kicked over. His ribs had been bothering him some, the ones that Damian knew were still healing from their grisly encounter with Lazlo Valentin weeks back. A dollotron had taken an iron pipe to him, and Damian had heard the snap from across the room. The ribs would be right soon, but they were still a touch tender, apparently. “Alright, are you going to tell me what’s really eating you or am I going to have to guess?”

Damian tightened his arms across his chest. He was not a child who had to be coddled. Back with the League, no one had cared, so long as it didn’t affect his performance. It didn’t matter then, it didn’t matter now. Coddling was weakness. Coddling was not for the son of the Bat, even if it was just a title, an inheritance if nothing else. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Alright, so you’re going to make me guess. I warn you, I used to date Barbara Gordon, I’m pretty good at guessing.” Damian could hear the wince in his voice as Grayson sat back, and he knew from experience that the muscle would be pulling at the broken ribs. It would pull and shift where the muscles of the arm and back wrapped around to anchor to rib bones, sharp and painful. He had leapt at that dollotron with the pipe before he’d even thought the action through, forcing it backward over a banister as Batman took a moment to rally. He’d been terrified, for an instant.

“I’m not playing this game, Grayson,” he bit out, affecting that aristocrat’s clipped English he had come to them with. Different than Bruce’s educated American sound. Grayson had laughed at first, said he sounded like some Saudi or Hashemite prince who’d been boarded at Eton. Damian had sneered at him because, he had said, ‘not all of us are required to sound like the unwashed masses,  _ peasant _ ’ _.  _ Grayson had laughed it off, but he was sorry for having said that, now. He remembered the praise he’d been given when he’d used normal American slang, and it felt warm and undeserved next to the guilt that twisted next to his heart, eating away like a parasite.

“Sounds like you’re not really mad at me or the bats. So I’m going to say the place,” Grayson mused, crossing his legs, suddenly a waiting thing. Damian had seen videos of the first Robin — a fluttery bird who couldn’t stop moving, who Batman had to hold back more times than he didn’t from doing something rash. The first Robin was a fidgeter, always in motion. The second Batman had since learned the value of stillness, even if he was constantly tapping his fingers on his knee and rolling his shoulder (the one that Two-Face had cracked with a baseball bat when Grayson was no older than Damian himself). Damian could be a waiting thing, too. He had sat in the shadows back at the League playing a twisted game of hide and seek. Hide in the shadows, still as mountains, wait for the game to end. It took hours. He knew how not to move even when his limbs went tingly and his stomach cramped with hunger. He knew the pain that followed if he moved. 

“Damian, look at me.”

He pressed his lips together, feeling his shoulders bunch in next to his neck. Grayson was using that soothing tone, the one that promised he wasn’t angry even though the words were a firm request without a question mark. If it was supposed to be a parental tone, it was the only one of its kind Damian had yet heard. Not really lifting his feet, he turned and leaned back against a railing, knowing that behind him was an abyssal depth, water still and cold and impossibly deep. Sightless fish probably lurked in the deepest parts, white and ghostlike, ghastly, but nothing more. Their hearts probably beat slowly, visible through the skin, red things bared to a world where no one else could see it. Grayson was being patient, so patient. More patient than he deserved. Why didn’t he yell more than he did? He yelled, could say words that hurt, was  _ savage _ in the field, and his temper was a known variable, but he didn’t seem to want to snap at Damian more than he had to. “Is it this place that’s bothering you? Because I grabbed what I needed to. We can leave.”

Damian didn’t bite at the bait Grayson had left. He let the feelings stew behind his teeth. 

“It’s a hard place for all of us, kiddo. It has a lot of memories.” He bent forward to rest his elbows on his knees, hands spread. “That’s part of why I moved us to the Bunker, to remove us out from under the weight of all that stuff B left behind. All those crosses that he bore that we don’t have to. It’s okay if you’re sad when you’re here. So am I.”

“I’m not  _ sad _ ,” he spat, and then regretted saying it. Richard was good with feelings, even if he was bad at lashing his own to the mast sometimes. He could put a finger on the root of feelings so well — it’s how he knew how to hurt when his temper got the better of him. Damian had seen him argue with Gordon, watched them bite and tear and bloody with words, savage and knowing just how to hurt each other. They both left those arguments limping and licking their wounds with a barely contained fury that was less about the fight so much as the weak spots exposed. He had seen him argue with Drake, a more one-sided battle that ended with Drake hurt and Grayson with bloody claws and angry regret. Damian knew that Grayson would grasp at the edges of that vulnerability and lift the stone to see what was underneath.

Richard’s eyebrows lifted for a moment, and Damian knew that he had found the corner pieces of the puzzle, assembling the edges in his head. “You’re not sad?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Damian scowled at Grayson’s long legs. Charcoal grey and those burgundy shoes Alfred had insisted on. He’d given Grayson the illusion of choice by setting out either a black pair or the burgundy knowing Grayson would choose colour every time. Apparently brown with charcoal Just Wasn’t Done. That was the word Pennyworth kept using. Charcoal. Something burned away and its remains used for something else. Art, or medicine. He remembered when he was very young indeed sticking a finger in the leftovers from a fire and smearing it in a swooping arc across the wall crammed up against his bed, like a secret. Grayson was wrapped in charcoal, that burned-away thing that had to become something new. He’d burned on his father’s pyre and wrapped himself in the ash. Damian scowled at his legs, feeling Grayson reaching for him without moving.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. Why do you think it doesn’t matter?”

“Because it doesn’t concern you, Grayson!”

He watched Richard’s eyes narrow at him. Not in an angry way, but in a way that said he’d just put another puzzle piece in place. “Why focus on me? You’re not mad at me. Do you think  _ I’ll _ be mad? Or disappointed if you talk to me?”

That was it, wasn’t it. Disappointment. Watching the pride that he didn’t want to admit he  _ craved _ drain out of his Batman’s eyes. Another soulless, made thing. Like those dollotrons. Ready to be replaced if they were defective. Like his mother was willing to replace him. He didn’t want to hear the cogs in Grayson’s brain rattle to the tune of reining in Damian al-Ghul, the murderous little brat who wasn’t mourning his own father’s death properly. His blood father.

He chewed on the inside of his mouth, tearing paper-thin, harmless strips of flesh with his teeth. When he dreamed of praise and approval it wasn’t his mother’s hand, or his grandfather’s on his shoulder. It wasn’t even his father’s. It was Grayson’s. Grayson who told him he was proud of him when he purported himself well, Grayson who never let him off easy, but always made sure to praise things done right. He had made Damian what he was becoming, and Damian honestly believed that if he disappeared, Grayson would care. He wanted to be worthy of that. He didn’t want to be a thing that couldn’t mourn properly.

Richard pushed himself up out of the chair, favouring the ribs where the skin would still be purple and yellow under his clothes, and crouched in front of him, looking up at their father’s only blood son. Damian knew he could see Bruce in the lines of his jaw — softer now than they would be later. Richard had said as much before, once -- presented like a truce, saying how much Damian looked like his father. Richard could see Martha Wayne’s nose there — things he recognised from ages as a child staring at old Wayne family photos, trying to know the people who were so important to Bruce. Talia was in there, too, in the green of his eyes and the colour of his skin, but there was so much of Bruce. So he had said, anyway. All of their father’s blood that was left was in this boy. Damian couldn’t see it yet.

“Unless you’ve defaced my favourite robot dinosaur, I promise I won’t be mad.”

Damian tutted his tongue against the back of his teeth -- the sound that made Fatgirl roll her eyes and Drake bristle. Bruce had raised his eyebrows the first time he’d heard it. A sound Talia used to make when she saw something that disappointed or frustrated. Her son had inherited the tic. He didn’t look Grayson straight in the eyes. “You can’t have a favourite robot dinosaur. There’s only one.”

Grayson grinned up at him, “You’re telling me that in the whole world there’s only this one robot dinosaur? I can definitely have a favourite. Now why do you think I’ll be mad?”

Damian realized it had been a bad idea to put his back to the railing. With Grayson crouched in front of him, there was no easy means of sliding away. Water dripped behind him into the great abyssal reservoir in the cave, echoing and cathedral-chilling. He shivered. The air was always cool in here, uncomfortable and sweaty feeling. Water leaked down the walls in places, and stalactites dripped and dripped. The whirr of the servers was dead now, with Grayson having gotten what he came for, so Damian could hear --  _ really _ hear -- the drip of water and the rustling of wings. He pressed himself back against the rail and let his arms drop to grasp the metal white-knuckled. Grayson had cornered him and he knew it -- he had a dogged look on his face. The one that Gordon had once threatened him about, the one that knew he was close to prying open the hiding thing to see what lay under.

“Damian--”

“I’m not sad because he’s not my father.” The words spilled out of Damian’s mouth before he could stop them, and he instantly regretted them, seeing the bewildered look smack itself across Grayson’s face like he’d been slapped. “He  _ is _ , but I barely knew him and I don’t think he liked me, and all of you are so  _ sad _ , and I’m just… I’m the burden my mother dropped on him, and you expect me to miss him, and I just  _ don’t _ . He’s not my dad and he’s not my Batman.”

Grayson -- Dick -- stood, towering over him again, grin gone and expression something Damian didn’t recognize. It wasn’t disappointed or angry, upset or even surprised. It was that stillness he’d learned as an adult that seemed so strange on him. It was an evaluating look, like he was at a loss and trying to weigh his words. Dick was very, very good at hot and cold furies both, but this felt different. This wasn’t angry, this was just a void of feeling. Suddenly in the cave’s half-light the charcoal suit he’d been forced into was as good as the batsuit, grey and authoritative. Damian shrank a little, in his shadow, gripping the rail like a lifeline. He could almost hear his mother’s shoes clack-clacking on the floor when he was made to hold his hands out, his physics tutor slapping across the flesh of his palms with a rod for incorrect answers. His mother had walked past.

“You think I’d be angry at you.”

Damian flinched, the words like a physical thing. They weighed on his shoulders and tried to force him downward like a press. He was grandson of the Demon’s Head. Ra’s al-Ghul’s grandson, Talia al-Ghul’s son, Batman’s son. He straightened himself and decided that he would take whatever Grayson gave. He would take it like he had always taken it, even if he could feel childish tears hot behind his eyes. He knew how not to cry.

“Damian, you need to come with me.”

He looked up to watch his Batman turn on a heel and march back toward the main annex of the cave without looking for Damian to follow, those stiff-soled shoes tap-tapping as he went. Damian stood in silence for a moment, guilty, ashamed and full of dread, before following. As Grayson passed the Batcomputer, the blazer was removed and tossed over the back of the chair he had grown up seeing Bruce sitting in, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbow, even if the vest stayed on. He paused for a moment to pull off those shoes with only a little swearing, while Damian watched, guilt smothering over whatever confusion would have been there otherwise. Stripped of the slick, treadless dress shoes, Damian watched as he vaulted over a guardrail onto a lower platform, landing catlike in a way Damian hadn’t quite mastered yet.

“Damian, now!” he hollered over his shoulder, not quite the voice he used to imitate Bruce in the cowl, but with the same authority. The one he guessed Grayson had learned on all those teams he had led. Working alone with him, he sometimes forgot that Grayson was a habitual team leader, rather than an equal partner in crime. He supposed it wasn’t really his fault. He’d never really known Nightwing the same way -- Nightwing was someone he’d read about more than someone he’d worked with, except for once or twice so early in that he hadn’t been honestly paying attention. He hadn’t had the opportunity to see him in his natural habitat, before he stepped into a cape and cowl that wasn’t his and tried to own it like he needed to. Damian looked down at the shoes on his feet and considered them for a moment -- the same kind of dress shoes as Grayson, just in black, shiny and new. He pulled them off and left them next to the ones Grayson had abandoned -- his were so much smaller -- before following behind.

Grayson had stopped in front of the giant, shrouded dinosaur, contemplating the white dust cover he and Alfred had draped over it during the move to the Bunker. He tugged at it experimentally and, after a moment considering it, took hold of a hanging edge and started dragging it backwards. Damian stood for a moment, watching, before he was barked at to help, and took a seam in his own hands, putting his entire weight into pulling. It came off the dinosaur like a heavy old blanket, sliding over the face and dripping down the back with a hiss of fabric over faux scale. It was a silly looking thing, Damian thought, seeing it again under the hazy cave lights. He’d stared at it when he had first come to this cave, when it had been lined with trophies and empty costumes under glass like sick memorials to the living. He’d stood under this dinosaur, dressed in white, acting like the prince Grayson had teased him about being, cruel and feeling abandoned, and he’d looked up at it with a scoffing eye. A giant, robot dinosaur. A giant penny. It was the same now as it had been then, green scales still matte and vibrant under the lights, but he wasn’t laughing.

Grayson walked off across the dust cover, navy blue socks silent as he went. Damian knew the socks were his small rebellion. He’d pulled up a leg of his slacks in the car earlier, finger mischievous against his lips and benign chaos lit behind his eyes, showing off the brain-bogglingly bright blue argyle pattern that checkered its way up above the ankle. His little mutiny. He wasn’t smiling now, as he pulled his slacks up at the thigh a touch to loosen them around his knees, and scrambled artfully as he was able up the back of the beast, dropping to sit on the top of its head, legs dangling over the nose.

He patted the spot beside him, “Come here.”

Damian hesitated a moment before following, the feel of faux scales strange under his hands. It wasn’t as easy to climb as Grayson had made it look, but Damian quickly figured out how to navigate the faux-scales of the dinosaur, scuttling up the back along what he realized were places where hands and feet had gone many, many times before. The dinosaur’s back was like stones worn down by frequent feet in a monastery, like handholds worn shiny and slick with too many palms, only subtler, reserved for the few and far between. He sat himself next to Grayson, and there really wasn’t any space to do anything but squish in next to him.

“I’m here,” he said quietly, and he heard the shame dripping from every word.

Dick was quiet, and very, very still. Not the kind of waiting stillness that he had been before, but a kind of stillness that meant seriousness and weighing one’s words. He held his hands in his lap, resting his feet on the tyrannosaurus’s nose. Rubbing his hands together, he leaned forward, pressing elbows into his knees. 

“First off,” he began, words slow and careful, and Damian realized for the first time that he wasn’t rubbing his hands together, he was  _ wringing _ them in slow motion. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not. You’ve seen me mad. I’m not mad, not really. And if I am, it’s not at you, kiddo, trust me.” He licked his lips, staring at his hands. Damian looked down at his own hands, feeling very still himself, now. So contrary to how he had felt earlier, kicking chairs like he didn’t know better. The anger was gone. Only shame remained. “Second off,” a long sigh, and an unsure pause to go with it. “Second… I know that Bruce can be… he can be hard to know, sometimes. Believe me, I’ve spent almost my whole life learning how. I know how easy it is to miss how much he cares. Sometimes it seems like he cares more about the Mission than you, or cares more about your performance than your feelings. I know.”

Damian pressed his lips together and kept his hands in his lap, looking at how much longer Grayson’s legs were. He’d seen, when he was here at the manor, lurking around in those first few days, the doorframe with all the lines on it, marked in ballpoint. It was a certain kind of graffiti that etched the gateway to Bruce’s office. He’d seen it. Dick, age 8. Dick, age 10, age 11, age 12, right next to older, india-ink marks of Bruce, age 6, age 7, age 8, and then further marks done in a different hand. Get to a certain height and there was Jason, marks that stopped after 14. Timothy was absent until well after he was Robin -- after his father died, it could be assumed. Even Cassandra was there. It was a forest of pen marks getting taller and taller up the doorframe. Damian had looked at it with a certain kind of disdain when he’d first gotten here, but even then he’d noticed where he stood against the names and ages on the door. He was taller than Grayson had been at his age, if not by much, and now the man’s legs stretched out forever. There was so much  _ time _ here.

“You know what happened with Two-Face when I was around your age. I know you’ve read the files,” he continued, and Damian grimaced. He knew. GCPD evidence photos of a baseball bat covered in blood, and Jason Todd nearly being an encore rather than a solo act, by scant hairs and skinned teeth. Archived lists of injuries, broken bones, internal bleeding. It had been grisly. “After that, Bruce fired me. Pink slip, flash-bam-alakazam kind of firing.”

Damian looked up at him, shocked, “What? But you were his Robin.”

“I was distraught. I thought it was punishment. It  _ was _ punishment, in its way, and because I wasn’t with him, Bruce was never around, and back then… D, this house was empty. It was big and empty and I hadn’t met Donna or Wally, I had no friends. I felt more alone than I had ever been. I felt like I’d had a part of myself ripped away from me. I felt like Bruce didn’t want me. Didn’t want me around. I wasn’t important.” He spread his hands out in front of him, palms up, looking at his fingers, at the slim, pale scars that wrapped around some of them, that snaked into the palm where he’d gripped a knife once, or caught himself on something that tore flesh. “And there was a time only a few years ago where we were fighting like cats and dogs. I was so desperate to be my own person that every time we talked to each other it became a fight. And then we just didn’t talk at all. We weren’t really talking for… I don’t know -- over two years? Three? I don’t remember. Ask Babs, she’ll know. I don’t think I even invited him to my wedding. I should’ve apologized for that. Don’t think I ever did.” He took a deep breath, full of hurt, and Damian balled up his fists and squeezed nails into his palms, trying to catch onto the edges of that well, because maybe then he could dip himself into it like a son should.

“Damian, my point is. when he fired me that first time, it was because he didn’t want me hurt. He was scared, and he cared so much that he forgot about my feelings in order to try and save me from myself. And even though we fought and avoided each other for so long, when I moved out to Blüdhaven he came to make sure I was alright on my own. He couldn’t even say the L-word when he was trying to tell me why he’d decided to try to adopt me, if I’d have him. He was bad at it, laughably bad, even, so I’m not surprised you didn’t notice it. I had trouble sometimes, too, but he loved me, like I know he loves --  _ loved _ you.”

Damian pressed his lips together even harder, biting them between teeth, curling a little into himself even as he was squished right up against this other man. His eyes burned, and his chest was tight, and it made him want to kick another chair. Instead he felt Grayson lift an arm to set around him and pull him closer.

“You just surprised him, buddy. Your mom didn’t mention a word until you were dropped on the doorstep, and I mean, you’re so like him it’s painful. Neither of you are the easiest people to try and wrangle. You’re both so stubborn, and so proud, and both of you have enormous hearts when you think no one is looking. He didn’t know where to begin, but I  _ know _ he loved you. Trust me, I know him better than you do -- knew him, sorry.” Grief rolled off him again in a shiver so well-hidden that Damian nearly missed it. Would have, if he hadn’t put an arm around his shoulders. “I wish you two had had more time. I didn’t have as much time with mine as I could’ve.” He paused and Damian could feel Grayson’s shoulders draw in, like he was trying to make himself smaller. “If I’m being honest,” his voice had gotten so small, so soft, and for a moment Damian could almost imagine the little boy he had been, “Some days I can’t really remember what he looked like, or what he sounded like. I’m not sure what parts of him are real and what parts I’ve invented. My whole image of him could be… could be all in my head. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I never really knew him as a person. I was only eight. I was so young. I had  _ eight years _ with my dad. That’s nothing,  _ nothing _ . I was lucky to have almost twenty more with another. One I got to know. And now I’ve lost him, too. I wish I could give him back to you. I would give anything for you to have what neither of us had with our fathers. You would have loved him, if you’d had the chance. Like I did.”

Damian sniffled, and felt a tear spill over eyelashes. If he could have yelled at it, ordered it to crawl back in, he would have, but he couldn’t. He felt stupid, and weak, and childish, and he shivered, angry at how  _ ridiculous _ it was to cry. “It’s not fair.”

“I know,” a second arm came to wrap around him, and Damian couldn’t help but cling to him, feeling another tear spill over, and another. The man who had wrestled him, grousing and groaning, into standing up against that doorframe, the one to the office that had been left untouched, and marking in sharpie, a harsh, fresh-edged black in Dick’s jagged handwriting,  _ Damian -- age 10 _ . Just a little above Bruce’s neat  _ Dick -- age 10 _ . And just a little below Pennyworth’s beautiful hand,  _ Bruce -- age 10 _ . “I know it isn’t fair.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice sounded childish and choked, and the inhale that followed was frighteningly close to a sob. He twisted and hesitant arms snaked around Grayson’s back, clinging there. The back of that silly grey vest was slick silk under his palms.

“Shh, it’s okay,” the arms tightened around Damian as he held him there. It was almost uncomfortably warm, and he could feel Grayson shaking just a little, just enough to let him know that he was keeping himself in tight rein. Keeping it together -- for him, Damian realized. All for him. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s so stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. You’re allowed to feel how you do.” He rubbed Damian’s back with a hand, firm and soothing. “I don’t want you to feel like I’d be mad at you for something like this. Or disappointed. It’s a hard thing and we’re all dealing with it differently.”

He knew Grayson was thinking of Drake in that moment. Drake who was losing his mind. Drake who was so convinced that Bruce wasn’t dead that it was frightening, who was so dogged in this fool’s errand of his that no matter how hard Grayson tried to convince him that Bruce was dead, begged him to let it go, for his own sanity if for nothing else, he wouldn’t be moved. He hunched over his computers and typed away, nevermind that his older brother felt like he was losing another piece of his family to obsession. He knew Grayson was thinking of Gordon, who had taken leave of her better judgement and made Brown into Batgirl. Damian and Brown had both heard those fights, sitting up in an alcove here in the cave, listening to Grayson and Gordon throw words at each other like knives. Watching them follow each other around as they yelled and threatened. Brown had joked that “Uh-oh, Mom and Dad are fighting”. Damian had scoffed. Gordon wasn’t his mother — his mother was far superior in literally every way — and Grayson certainly wasn’t…

He pressed his forehead into Grayson’s shoulder, small fingers pressing into the silk backing of that vest he knew the man would rather not be wearing. Grayson who measured him against a wall like family. Grayson who made him Robin, who cared if he was sad and promised not to be mad at him, even if he maybe deserved it. Grayson who dragged him to the arcade and the circus because You Have To Be A Kid, Lil D. Grayson had gone and hugged an elephant, with a closed-eye, deep-inhale kind of longing, and the elephant had wrapped its trunk around his waist. After a moment, he had beckoned Damian forward. Damian had tried to pretend he was too good for such things, but Zitka the Elephant had wrapped her trunk around him and he had had to fight not to smile. He’d lost, and Grayson had grinned like watching that boy smile was the best thing he had ever seen.

Grayson made a motion towards what Damian strongly suspected was kissing the top of his head (he resisted the urge to make a face). “This stuff is confusing. You’re a good kid, Damian Wayne. You’re a gigantic pain in the  _ ass _ , but you’re a good kid, and I love you loads.”

Damian could have choked on his own heart. It felt like his whole body was constricting, a snake trying to kill something too big for it, trying to swallow something too ungainly. It was foreign and it hurt, and it felt like weakness, like something his mother wouldn’t be proud of. But if she wasn’t proud of it, it felt like something Grayson would be. Maybe something the first Batman would have been proud of, too — but somehow that felt less important. He took a shuddering, wheezing, tearful inhale.

“I…” Damian started, his throat closing around the words. A better son could say it. A better son would be honest.

He caught himself in the thought.

A better son.

He swallowed, tried to force the words out. They burned desperately at him, lodged in his throat like a marble, suffocating.

“Richard, I…”

Grayson just squeezed his shoulders a little.

“I know, buddy. I know.”

“I’m sorry—“

“I love you, too.”

The fire burning inside him, desperate to get the words out, dimmed slightly, like Richard had poured coolant over him, soothing. He relaxed and let go, let Grayson’s arms slip off from where they’d been holding him, gathered his own back into his lap, rubbing his face to wipe away the evidence. One of Grayson’s arms stayed draped around his shoulders, and Damian let himself lean a little bit -- just a little -- into him. He looked out at the cave beneath them, disarmingly empty, shrouded in dust covers, boxes piled in corners. It was a mausoleum to something that wasn’t gone, but had changed, and Damian wanted nothing more than to go back home -- the one he and Grayson had made under the tower.

“You know, I think you’re the first person I’ve brought up here since  _ I _ was Robin,” Grayson laughed. “Not since Babs, I think. You’re now on a very short list of very cool people, D.”

Damian swept a fist across his eyes again, putting on a frown, even though the fire had been doused now, with an arm heavy across his back and an uncomfortable warmth spreading through his blood. He clucked his tongue against his teeth, “You’re not that cool, and neither is Gordon. I just made this spot cool by myself, Grayson. You’re welcome.” He was proud of how steady his voice was, how well he kept it.

Something lit up a little next to his heart, where the shame still writhed (smaller now), when Grayson laughed. “Oh sorry, I forgot. The OG team has always been super uncool grown-ups.”

“Who like disco.”

Damian’s shoulders got a squeeze. “Right. Super uncool grown-ups who like disco, even though there is absolutely  _ nothing _ wrong with disco. Came out of the womb thirty years old and filing taxes.” Grayson nudged him just a little, conspiratorially soft, “I wouldn’t tell Babs you think she likes disco. She’ll do that thing she does -- she’s more of a 50s rock and roll kind of gal. Like Chuck Berry and Little Richard and stuff.”

“Clearly her taste is as lacking as yours.”

Grayson huffed, “We of the peasantry have to keep ourselves occupied somehow.”

Grayson seemed content just to sit for a minute, and so Damian sat, too, finding his centre again. The bats chirrupped, and Damian watched as Grayson closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, eyebrows drawn in a pattern of concerted remembering. Remembering bats swooping for his sandwiches, a young redheaded Batgirl laughing, and trying to sneak-attack Batman from the rafters. Remembering the first time he had put on his father’s leather jacket in their trailer at the circus, how it had swamped him, how he was sure he’d never fit into its shoulders. Damian had watched him stare down a board room full of people who had watched him grow up, and still thought of him as Bruce Wayne’s whim of a ward from the circus, watched them realize he wouldn’t be moved, wouldn’t be bullied. All while wearing terrible argyle socks.

Damian looked out across the cave, at all of the shrouded things, the piled boxes full of his father’s detritus that Grayson hadn’t needed to bring with them to the Bunker. Things that had been important once, or had been a work in progress that would never be finished. Remnants of a person Damian would never really know, and still didn’t feel he could truly, honestly mourn. Grayson’s arm was heavy and solid around his shoulders. It’s hard to mourn a father when you already have a dad.


End file.
